A minority stake has been picked up in the company and not in any specific construction projects. Credit Suisse has invested $77 million (Rs 325 crore) in first tranche of investment and This is one of the few real estate deals this year in which stake has been picked up in the company itself and not in special purpose vehicle or a project. This year in about 26 deals real estate deals in the first quarter of 2008, about 19 deals have been done via SPV’s.

In January last year, Citigroup’s private equity arm Citigroup Venture Capital International had invested $50 million in Indu Projects. It has also raised $20 million funding from Nimmagadda Prasad of Matrix Laboratries. Together these two investors hold around 18 per cent stake in Indu Projects. It was reported earlier this that Indu was planning to dilute 10 per cent stake for Rs 400 crore. Indu projects is involved in construction of SEZs, residential and commercial projects. It is currently developing two IT SEZs in Hyderabad and six integrated townships in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. All these projects have a combined worth of Rs 13,500 crore. Avendus Cpaital was the financial advisor to the transaction.

The deal is one of the biggest deals in real estate. Some of the other big deals in the real estate this year are SUN-Apollo’s $76 million investment in Amrapali Group and warburg Pincus’s $75 million investment in Mannat Group. The Indu Projects deal has been done by Credit Suisse Private Equity Asia team which comprises of industry veterans such as Hemang Raja, Gaurav Kumar, Nikhil Bhatia and Sameer Nair. The private equity division of Credit Suisse has more than $29 billion in committed capital.